Mark Schenker

As I mentioned in my previous post, Jimmy and I had gotten together to finish up the drum tracks on the remaining nine songs. As usual everything went pretty well except for on a few songs, “By The Balls” I think it was (which most of you know as our current opening live song) there was a problem with the original Sonar project and it was a few beats per measure fast – it started to sound like a heavy metal song. Luckily I had an old version of the project that was the right speed. Don’t know how it got messed up, it must have gotten mixed up on Rob’s hard drive with the one that was the correct speed.

Something else was going wrong for us; some of the projects would simply not play the audio in time with the MIDI tracks which made it hard for Jimmy to play with the click track which was in Sonar and being played to the 2480 recorder while he plays to it. What we do is take our demo projects, mute everything but say one guitar and the lead vocal, then create a click track in the project for Jimmy to play with. He likes the lead vocal and guitar turned down to where he can just barely hear it underneath the click and his playing. The recorded audio would drift out of sync with the click track by the end of the song. Not a big deal but annoying as hell for Jimmy – but he’s a pro, he played right through it.

After those sessions we were all proud that we had finished everything and could move on to finishing up the guitars on the first six songs. I also had figured out the sync problem in the mean time. It was something as simple as switching the master clock to the computer and slaving the 2480 to the computer rather than the other way around. In Sonar’s docs, it had some blurb about not playing audio in sync with MIDI tracks when Sonar is not the sync master. I got that problem remedied pretty quick.

Then the bad news. I’m not sure what made me go back and listen to those tracks because we were still pretty heavily involved in the first six tracks we recorded, getting guitars and overdubs done, but I went back and listened to either “By The Balls” or “Slow to Blow.” Just for fun because I recalled Jimmy’s groove was pretty happening on both songs. While I was listening, I was sitting there thinking things sounded really good and punchy. Then I noticed something was funny about the cymbals. When he hit the cymbals, there was no separation in the stereo field. On my Presonus Central Station, there is a mono button on the remote controller and I use that of make sure nothing is out of phase. Usually when you hit the mono button, everything sounds drastically different. When I hit it this time, nothing changed. That’s bad, real real bad. I figured it might be just a mic phasing thing, easily fixed. But it was much worse than that. After listening and trying different things, I realized in horror that I had recorded the overheads in mono. I had not felt my heart sink like that in a while. I looked at the inputs I used for the overheads and through the signal path I had made the tracks stereo paired – except in one spot. At that point forward, both mics are combined into two of the same sound. Completely useless. I can describe it like this. When you listen to a record, the drummer hits a crash cymbal and you hear it on one side or the other depending on which cymbal he hits. On these tracks, all cymbal hits were right up the middle, neither right nor left. How awful!

Hoping that maybe I had just fucked up one song, I opened all nine projects and they were all mono overheads. Crap. No luck whatsoever. Then in a very paranoid move, I opened up the other six projects we already did and checked those, they were fine.

Can anybody say do-over?

That’s all we could do, chalk it up to experience. I missed one. Jimmy took the news well, even though it was a stupid mistake on my part. I try not to miss details like that, I guess nobody’s perfect, even when you try really hard and there’s a lot of work on the line.

When Jimmy came back to re-do the tracks, I had acquired a couple of new toys that I really didn’t think much of and thought we’d try just for fun. I bought a Crown PZM 30D mic on a whim because I heard one on some drum tracks I was listening to. It was an example track on an equipment example CD I got somewhere. PZM stands for pressure zone microphone. It’s a very different kind of mic, you don’t actually “mic” an instrument with it. You put it on the floor, a table, tape it to a wall – any flat surface will do. It’s supposed to pick up sound reflections from hard flat surfaces. I figured I’d try it and if it sucked I’d put it on eBay and lose a few bucks. I’d consider that rental fees to try it out.

I had never used one of these mics before and so I thought the best thing to do would be to put it on the hardwood floor adjacent to my family room which is where we setup and record Jimmy’s drums. I had written down all the settings from our last drum sessions. All the compressors, all the mic pre knob positions, all the fader and level positions were recorded. Some stuff I took digital pics of because it was too tedious to type it up. My motivation was just in case we had to redo something which is exactly what we were doing right now; all the new sessions would sound the same as the previously recorded six songs.

While checking the sounds on each drum, I noticed the kit was really popping and sounding nice and big. I hate to compare but it reminded be of Bonham’s sound on “In Through the Out Door.” Just a big tight and roomy sound. I thought I was hearing too much overhead and room so I kept turning those mics down so I could focus on the close mic’d sounds. I kept turning them down lower and lower and it still sounded huge. I realized the PZM was what was giving me all the incredible room sound I was hearing! Jimmy and were both pretty impressed with that little thing. When mixed in with the room mics and overheads, it is really something. I don’t know exactly how it works or why it sounds so good, but it’s really worth the money.

Of course it sounded so good on drums, I’ve since tried it on every other instrument. It was just OK on guitars and didn’t really add a whole lot to anything else I tried. But from now on it’s must have on drums!

We did two or three takes of each song and other than the addition of the PZM, we thought these sessions sounded markedly better than the last six songs we did. So what did we do right when we thought we were finished? We decided to REDO the first six songs!! Even though they have bass, guitar and vocals and were practically done, we just said fuck it, this new sound works so well, we have to go through the extra effort. We scheduled another session two weeks later in which time I touched NOTHING in my studio so all the settings were exactly the same. We were going to take pics of mic placement but we mic everything the exact same way every time so that wasn’t an issue. Between Jimmy and me, we have really good recall on details so we didn’t bother. We do have one pic of how high we keep the overheads over the kit, that was from our very first session and we do look at that when we setup. Needless to say “PZM” was the buzzword in the dressing room for the next two weeks and over email.

The next sessions went great. We kept referring back to the first tracks to make sure Jimmy matched his original performances which he liked very much. There were a couple of things that had to be redone on bass and guitar. A drummer who has a monster groove like Jimmy, well you can’t expect him to play with the exact same feel for every performance. So since his feel was slightly different on some things, I went back in and re-did a few bass tracks to tighten it up. A few guitar parts were redone too. More on guitars later.

In summary, we had a good time redoing those bad recordings and honestly, the second trip through the songs was much better, sounded better, played better – everything. I’m pretty stoked about it. All the drum tracks are officially done. Hooray!!

I posted a song on our MySpace site – not new, I just stuck “Just One Dance” up there from Skin to Skin and Rob and I were talking about how much we can’t wait to get this thing done and out there for everybody to hear, we’re so in love with what we are doing we can barely stand the wait!

Well, since it was much cooler today, 104 degrees on the official Myrtle Beach poolside thermometer rather than the 108 degrees of yesterday – what a relief, I thought I’d work on my notes some more and try to get something else posted. I found out the heat index yesterday here was 121 degrees! Everybody is swimming and enjoying the sun – I don’t get it, how come nobody else has their laptop with them on the beach? How strange . . . must be the heat getting to them!

I decided to do something different for the backup vocals this time around. On “Skin” Steve did most of the backups with a couple of overdubbed vocals by Dean and I, and even some by Rob before he joined the band. I would liked to have done what I’m doing this time but there wasn’t really the luxury of time while recording “Skin.”

I want the backups to sound big and endless on this record without relying on reverb and delay so I’m going for the Mutt Lange/Mike Shipley method of recording and mixing vocals. More or less. For those of you who don’t know Mike Shipley, well, I don’t know him either. I know that he is Mutt’s right hand man and has worked on all of Mutt’s big records – AC/DC, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams and even worked on Shania Twain’s recordings a bit. He’s one of the best engineers in the world – you’d have to be to work for a perfectionist like Mutt. Their method, as described by “Ship” is to record twenty or so takes of the same part, scoop the mids out a little, boost the highs, and squash the shit out of them with a nice compressor. The resulting vocal sound really speaks for itself. The only problem I have with that is that if you have a vocal part with three harmony parts, that adds up to sixty takes of the same line. There is no chance I could have talked Steve, Jimmy and Rob into that. (Dean’s playing schedule prevents him from being available for backups – but I think those three can cover for him!)

So here’s what I did instead. I recorded each part three times with Steve, Jimmy and Rob around the mic. For the first take, Jimmy in the middle, for the second Steve in the middle and the third take has Rob in the middle. This way no one voice will be dominant in the mix and I get nine voices for each part and since most parts have three part harmonies, that gives me twenty seven voices all together. (Whoa, check out the big brain on Brett – you one smart motherfucker!) Not precisely the Mutt/Shipley sound but close enough for me. Effort per gain factor you know.

I recorded all the backup vocal tracks in Sonar synchronized up to the VS-2480. I could have done them all on the VS and bounced them down, but the machine tends to slow very slightly when a project gets loaded up with v-tracks and I needed to do a little editing of the backup tracks before I flew them into the VS. One of the things that happens when you record that many voices on that many tracks is the voices flam a little at the very beginning of the phrase. I just used the regular editing tools in Sonar to chop off the very first several milliseconds of each phrase so it doesn’t sound loose whenever a backup vocal starts. It’s easier to edit the tracks in Sonar than to edit that many tracks in the VS environment. Also, anytime you get three guys in a room doing backups under the pretense of some discipline, there tends to be some clowning around for relief that inevitably gets on some tracks, so I had to go in and edit all that shit out.

There was one song that had a shit load of gang vocals that got really fucked up when I tried to move a track and didn’t do it right. Suddenly the song on the VS was way out of sync with the backing vocals in Sonar. I tried to backtrack (undo my way out of it) and then Sonar started playing back the vocals at a different sample rate for some reason. Rob suggested exiting Sonar and rebooting so that’s what I did. Magically Sonar was back in sync with the VS and playing tracks at the right sample rate so we moved along. There were several anxious moments had by all when it seemed like we may have lost all our work on that song. That sidetracked us for about twenty minutes. This song was also one where the backup vocals were so high and such a long duration for each part that we only did two choruses of the first harmony and one of all the others. I copied those phrases to the other choruses in the song instead of having them do each chorus – we cheated a little. Those guys were absolutely worn out and their heads were going to explode!

I mentioned earlier the idea of scooping the mids out of the backup tracks. I didn’t do this in Sonar before running them over to the VS. I mixed all the parts after I edited them (where needed) down to a single track for each harmony part on every song. Then using the track dynamics and EQ’s on the VS I made my adjustments there. I shelved off the backups at about 250 and made a nice smile EQ curve between 250 and 10k then boosted about 3dB around 10-15k for some air. I did it this way incase I inadvertently did something horrible to the backup tracks. I could just re-mix them down from Sonar if I need to.

The result is nothing short of phenomenal in my opinion. If you like the backups on Journey and Def Leppard albums, then you are in for a treat with this record. I gave Jimmy a couple of mixes with all the backup vocals mixed in and he’s been calling me “Mutt” Schenker over email. Funny guy that Jimmy! I think that means he thinks it sounds phenomenal too . . .

One of the things that I had a lot of fun doing was a backup vocal effect on a song called “A Thousand Thank You’s.” The idea I had was to use a technique that the Beatles had used on some backup parts on Sgt. Pepper, “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” I think it was. They sang some of the backups through cardboard tubes to get that telephone-ish effect. You know, the kind you hate to see as the Christmas wrapping paper runs out when it won’t completely cover the gift you are wrapping. Sounds silly to do and I’m sure those who did the singing felt really silly singing through cardboard tubes. I can sympathize. Luckily for Steve, Rob and Jimmy, I neglected to procure said cardboard tubes before this backup session began. Oh well – not sure I could have talked them into doing it that way anyhow – even citing the Beatles as an irrefutable example! I knew I had some tools I could use instead to get the same effect.

What I did was copy the backup part to a stereo set of tracks – the part only happens twice in the song. I ran one side through an AM Radio simulator and the other side through a Bullhorn simulator then recorded only the effect return so there was none of the original signal in there. The Bullhorn simulator added a raunchy really bad honky distortion to the track – just like what you’d imagine a bullhorn sounds like. The AM Radio sim was also very accurate, it sounds like some shitty transistor mono tiny speaker radio with a little bit of that classic AM interference. Since they are on stereo paired tracks, you get a different effect on each side. I also took the right side and panned it into the middle as the part fades out so it seems like the part sweeps and changes as it is sung. Actually much cooler than just singing through cardboard tubes! It turned out great – Steve was really bowled over by it. Rob said I may have put a little too much reverb on it and he’s probably right – I can fix that later no problem.

Next, Jimmy and I recorded the drum tracks for the final eight songs completely all in one day, check back soon! And stay in the shade!

Mark

I promised to get this one up a little sooner but things have been progressing so quickly that it just didn’t happen until now. I’m currently in Myrtle Beach and editing what I wrote a few months ago as I sweat my ass off in 115 degree heat – it IS July in the South after all! Luckily my studio is 350 miles away or I’d be in there working on stuff rather than editing this!
Boy what can I say about Steve that has not already been said? I’m not sure where to start but here goes. I thought we might get three songs done but we got all six of them done! Steve is a fucking professional animal. I know I said this on the last album sessions, but he’s always prepared, and it seems like he doesn’t even have to try hard.

Most of the time, Steve will double his lead track with another track sung the same but slightly laid back. That of course will be mixed alot lower than the first. We did this on “Skin” and Steve says he has always doubled his vocal tracks since Midnite Dynamite. Before that he would only double some tracks. I think we decided to start with an easy song so he doesn’t have to push so hard right out of the chute so we chose “Fool’s Confession” to start with. It had been so long since we recorded vocals together, just he and I, that I had forgotten how truly great he is. When you’re in a studio recording a project, the microscopic environment and the scrutiny of the details will bring to light all of your weaknesses. It will also highlight all the things you are really good at. And Steve is phenomenal in the studio!

We tracked all the songs, saving one of the screamers for last. As we did the doubled tracks we sometimes had to go back and redo some of the trailing vocal lines to match the first one, but 99% of the time, Steve remembered exactly how he had just sang the first track and matched it almost precisely almost every time.

Steve then told me a story (from the room we are using as a “vocal booth”) about a conversation he had about double tracking vocals with famed producer Tom Werman, who produced “Blow My Fuse” as well as a Crue album or two as well as producing the likes of Dokken, Cheap Trick, Nugent, Poison, Twisted Sister, and L.A. Guns just for starters. Werman told Steve that the only people he had ever worked with that could properly double track vocals were Steve and Robin Zander. Steve says he thanked him but reminded him he had worked with the likes of Bret Michaels and Vince Neil and that he wasn’t sure if Werman was really complimenting him at all really! Robin Zander is damn good company to be mentioned in the same sentence with for sure.
Now for the technical part. I had used an Audio Technica for lead vox on the last record. As you already know I have upgraded some of my studio equipment and one of my better investments so far has been a Neumann TLM103 large diaphragm condenser mic that I have so far been using for a room mic on drums and guitars. The only time I used it on vocals previously was when Rob and I were recording some demos for songs we wrote and a couple of scratch vocal tracks Rob did here and there. It’s a great great mic with a capsule derived from the ultra high-end U87 and a nice response curve that is dead flat until it starts to rise at about 4k and drops off around 18k with what looks like about a 3-4dB boost in that range. Perfect for a rock vocal mic.

I also used the old standby Presonus mic-pre and a Distressor for light compression on the way in, 3:1 with about 2-3dB of gain reduction. I also used the HP response curve button on the Distressor which does something really cool. I’m not sure how many other compressors do this but the Distressor does it quite well. Enabling the HP circuitry does this – paraphrased from the manual: p’s” and “b’s” can hit the mic with an air blast that shows up as a high amplitude, low frequency signal, causing the compressor to “kick in”. The result may be a brief, unnatural drop in the apparent vocal level. This high-pass, or low cut, will not allow low, low frequencies to trigger compression, and in this case, prevent the unnatural drop in vocal level from a “p” or “b” blasting the mic with wind, while still letting the low frequencies to go through to tape. (or disc in this case)

Now just to reiterate, none of this stuff I write about, with recording vocals, drums or whatever, are not things I thought of, they’re not new nor are they innovative even though sometimes it might come across as though I’m having many eureka moments every time I touch a piece of gear. All these techniques are things any decent engineer would know, I’m just trying to give the reader a little insight into what goes on in the recording process and in my mind. So if you’re thinking, “wow he combined two bass signals to get his tone, or he pushed the HP button on the compressor – absolutely fucking brilliant!” I’m just another recycling donkey, just using shit me and every other professional and home recordist engineer knows as best I can to get the job done.

As I was saying, the Neumann is a great mic and since hearing how Rob’s voice sounded with it, I was pretty excited to get Steve’s voice with it. Steve told me the other day that he thinks that mic is the best sounding mic he’s ever sang into. Well that may be, but I have an EQ setting I use on his voice and that coupled with the musical sound of the Distressor compression, might just have a little more to do with it. Although I’m sure using a Neumann on vocals is a good idea. Probably 90% of every record you’ve ever heard has been sung through a Neumann U87. The problem I had with the U87 is that it costs $3000! Not exactly ny idea of a bargain and since the TLM103 is made from the U87 capsule, and this album not being a major label release, well I think the TLM103 is more than enough!

Steve told me the other day he has a few words he wants to change here and there and wanted to know if it would be a big deal to just punch him in for a word here and there – no problem we’ll do that next time he comes over.

Backup vocals are done and if it’s like a blast furnace here in Myrtle like it was today, I’ll have plenty of time between relaxing and sleeping to edit and post my notes.

Mark